childish commentary...

unfortunately not all well-spoken people have something to say....

on the recent interview of a young kuwaiti female on oprah. a sense of embarrassment overcame me for a split second until i realized that i don't really allow myself to be angered by the media. fight fire with fire. if we don't like what we hear then we should say otherwise. that's why i like blogging to some extent. i feel its a conduit for many positive (and not so positive) opinions to enter the public domain. eventually i expect many bloggers to sharpen their skills and participate in more open discourse (come out from behind your veils people!)

and now my advice to the sweet lady that felt selfish enough to indulge herself at the expense of her countrymen to be featured on one of the greatest 5 minutes of fame around:

• make room for others with a more real (read grassroots) story to tell. don't escape your ivory tower at their expense.
• realize when you are used as cheap entertainment. you were more a parlour act than a human being. (someone must have told her that right?) did you realize the audience was indulging their fantasies at our expense?
• don't waste a valuable opportunity to do some real good. seeing that you were too self-centered to let someone with a real story go on the air, you should have at least been more progressive than the hackneyed discussion about kuwaiti shopping habits. (and no, that passing swipe at female voting rights didn't count)
• stop for a few minutes on any main street in kuwait, get out of your car, and talk to some REAL people with REAL problems. i think this is self-explanatory but you can do some more research before you represent a whole country in a public forum.

it has crossed my mind, though, that i may be a little naive. what are the chances that she did not know what she was talking about? it must have been planned to a degree for her to only give a gilded image about kuwait. the problem is she could have done a better job even if she'd avoided the bad - by talking about valuable traditions, social ties, filial piety and more.

'nuff said.